Category: North York Moors
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Garfit Gap
Popped up Hasty Bank and Cold Moor for an amble around. A pleasant morning, loads of walkers on the Cleveland Way. This is Garfit Buttress, the south-western end of the outcrop of sandstone crags known as the Wainstones. Overlooking Garfit Gap towards Cold Moor. A view I’ve looked at many times, yet fresh every time.…
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Summerhouse Field
I think the farmer who tenants the Summerhouse field must be a reader of this blog. Just nine days after writing I hadn’t seen this field pastured for years, there were cattle lazing and grazing about among the tall grasses this morning. Although it is well known that Roseberry Topping is owned by the National…
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Commondale
Most people associate Commondale with the small collection of houses centred around the Cleveland Inn at the bottom of Sand Hill Bank. But Commondale only really begins there and ends downstream at the confluence of Commondale Beck with the River Esk. A narrow, secluded dale, about 4km long. Cyclists using the bridleway between Foul Green…
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Finally some sunshine
A week dominated by weather fronts sweeping across the country and where the mornings have become distinctly more autumnal. Nice to have some sunshine and clarity this morning then. This is a view north by northeast from Hutton Moor over Guisborough towards Redcar and the North Sea. On the right is Beacon Moor and Errington…
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Blakey Topping
A rewarding day on Thompson’s Rigg with the constant backdrop of Blakey Topping. The task was to install water vole fencing along Crosscliff Beck. Now that is not fencing to keep the water voles in but to keep sheep out. Water voles are one of our rarest native mammals and have suffered a sharp decline…
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Silver birch, Turkey Nab
Perhaps my favourite tree, one of the first trees to recolonise Britain after the ice sheets retreated. It is an opportunist tree, producing hundreds of windblown seeds that are quick to germinate and grow rapidly making it the bain of gamekeepers and foresters alike. Even the National Trust control the tree cover on their moorland…
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Lagopus lagopus
Ah, the “glorious twelfth”. Nothing much happening on Urra Moor, the cloud was down this morning so I assume any shooting planned would have been cancelled in any case. So this little fella survives another day. I spotted him along Carr Ridge on the edge of the escarpment clucking away. But high on Urra Moor…
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Ingleby Moor
No excuse but another photo of the purple. It’s that time of the year. Have to make the most of it. The season does not last long. Had a pootle around the upper reaches of Baysdale. This is from the east side of Tidy Brown Hill, overlooking Black Beck, a tributary of Baysdale Beck. In…
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The Summerhouse Field
A lazy day, tired after Lakeland exertions. I just managed to wander up with the dog to what the family calls the folly field but which the Tithe map of 1847 lists, perhaps not surprisingly, as the Summerhouse Field. By this time the summerhouse had been in existence for about seventy years. The map recorded…
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Cook’s Crags overlooking Kildale
Named as Ward Nab on the largest scale maps but known affectionately as Cook’s Crags by the climbing community. The ling is blooming nicely, here seen in a more natural setting than the vast swathes of moorland with which it is normally associated. The low lying shrub has been used through the ages as a…